barbed wire is for cattle

     Barbed wire was invented to keep cattle from straying--so they wouldn't become lost, or ruin a neighbor's crops. Barbed wire may be useful for cattle, or  when running a prison, but it doesn't belong on city streets. What is barbed wire is meant  to do at the top of a six-foot fence? Anyone who wanted to climb over that fence would do it with or without the barbed wire. If a six foot fence is protecting something so valuable the owner feels a need for barbed wire, then he or she already has a problem that barbed wire can not fix. Maybe the valuable goods need to be moved indoors.
     Here in Philadelphia we have something worse than barbed wire--razor wire. It is more common than barbed wire. You may see it on the roofs of buildings or on top of fences. Aside from making our city uglier, it is dangerous and ought to be illegal. Razor wire was at the top of a six foot fence built around nothing but some grass--this on street busy with pedestrian traffic. Any schoolchild could have been sliced up by it.
     The first razor wire I noticed ( in a neighborhood that vaunts itself as hip and stylish) was on top of a high fence built around goods for sale left outdoors. The solution would have been to move the goods indoors. Anyone who wanted them badly enough to climb a high fence would cut through the fence--and avoid the razor wire


Suggestion--razor wire is ugly, nasty, and probably already illegal. If it isn't already illegal as a man trap ( protecting property with a device meant to cause injury or death), then perhaps we can get a new law or ordinance passed to make it illegal.